Education Workshops and Sessions at AGU Fall 2012 Meeting

NAGT is pleased to outline a variety of geoscience education sessions planned for the Fall 2012 AGU Meeting held in San Francisco, CA, from 3-7 December, 2012. Please submit an abstract and plan to attend the following sessions highlighting key issues of importance to geoscience educators at all levels. The deadline for submitting abstracts to the 2012 meeting is August 8, 2012.

Jump Down To: Associated Topical Sessions

Workshops

Effective Teaching and Learning in the Large Classroom Setting

This active-engagement half-day workshop will focus on philosophy, strategies, techniques, assessment, and available resources on effective teaching and learning in large classrooms. In the current financial and education environment, many institutions are implementing larger classes, which present a unique set of opportunities and challenges. Participants will leave this workshop armed with research-based knowledge and practical advice from the leaders and the geoscience education community about what does, and does not, work well in the large classroom setting.

Ticket Cost: $25.00 | Register via the AGU website


Education Topical Sessions

ED001: Education General Contributions

James Byrne, Stephen Macko

Description: This session provides the opportunity for contributions that fall within the broad spectrum of Education, but are not directly appropriate to any of the other sessions proposed for the focus group.

ED002: Bright STaRS: Bright Students Training as Research Scientists

Pranoti Asher, Jennifer Saltzman

Description: Several Programs in the San Francisco Bay Area support talented middle and high school students to discover the Earth and Space Sciences through after school and summer programs that provide hands-on research opportunities. Student research topics range from geomorphology to air pollution to paleobiology to shoreline monitoring. This session will highlight recent research, presented by the students themselves. Middle and high school students involved in similar programs at other locations are encouraged to contact the conveners to submit their projects to this session.

ED003: Capacity Building in Utilization of Earth Observations

Kenton Ross

Description: Space-based observations, and the understanding of the Earth system they provide, are a vast source of information needed by policy makers, resource managers, forecasters, and first responders. Cross-cutting capacity building activities that sponsor, discover and demonstrate applications that inform policy and decision makers are extremely relevant in today's environment. This session will provide a forum for capacity building activities that focus on the improvement of human, scientific, and/or resource capacities of individuals and organizations to access and apply Earth observations for societal benefit. Capacity building results and best practices that enhance policy and decision making support will be central to the discussion.

ED004: Climate Literacy: Barriers, Misconceptions and Progress in Improving Climate Literacy

Susan Buhr, Kathy Ellins, Lin Chambers

Description: Significant challenges affect efforts to convey and understanding of Earth's climate system and climate change. These challenges are rooted in complex factors, including prior conceptions, beliefs, values, and culture. Investigators are testing ways to address these challenges. We seek papers that (1) focus on misconceptions held by learners; (2) explore obstacles to climate literacy, including the impact of anti-science and climate denial efforts; or (3) present data-supported strategies to overcome barriers. We seek contributions across a variety of audiences, including formal education at the K-12 or college level, informal education, professional development, and communication efforts.

ED005: Climate Literacy: Bridging Formal/Informal Learning Environments to Support Deep Investigation of Climate Science

Kathlyn Stylinski, Edward Geary, Marcus Griswold, Marry Ann Steiner

Description: To promote climate science literacy, we need a lifelong learning approach that integrates in and out of school experiences and combines emotional connection to logical impacts with cognitive understanding of systems science and decision-making processes. We face significant challenges in bridging the gap between formal and informal environments. This session will explore barriers and strategies to address these, such as examining approaches that translate learner-directed pedagogical practices from free-choice learning to the classroom and structures in formal/informal collaborations that support lifelong learning of climate science and community-based environmental issues.

ED006: Climate Literacy: Education for Decision Makers, Religious Communities, and Professional Audiences

Jeffrey Ryan, Karen McNeal

Description: Educating adult audiences about climate change is critical given the need for urgent societal and infrastructural changes, but comes with unique challenges. Education strategies for decision-makers/professionals and businessmen, religious communities, agriculture/fishing communities, and other diverse adult stakeholder audiences must be tailored to address their particular concerns and needs. We invite papers that share insights about the climate change knowledge, perceptions and attitudes for these audiences. Papers on best practices for reaching particular adult audiences and/or research results from such activities are of particular interest.

ED007: Climate Literacy: Enabling Responsible Decisions Through Informal Education, Public Outreach, and Community Groups

Tamara Ledley, Ryan Vachon, Matt Lappe, Mark Chandler

Description: Making responsible decisions about climate change requires citizens to be well-informed about key issues, especially those that affect their local environment and communities. Informal education venues, public outreach programs, and community groups provide avenues through which citizens with diverse backgrounds, expertise and concerns can obtain the knowledge and tools they need to increase their understanding of climate change and its impacts. We welcome abstracts about efforts to engage people in understanding the science and impacts associated with climate change, including examples of how to shift attitudes, change behavior, and overcome barriers to implement programs.

ED008: Climate Literacy: Evidence and Best Practices from Research and Evaluation

Robert Edward Bleicher, Deborah Morrison, Karen McNeal, Ann Martin

Description: We now have many years of evaluation data from climate change education and outreach programs funded by federal agencies and foundations. Evaluation efforts within this community of projects provide a rich opportunity to share evaluation approaches, and results, for programs that are similar in content and message, but different in learning environments and audiences. In this session, we welcome papers that address the findings of evaluation/research in climate change education, particularly in reference to best practices, challenges, and insights into impact. We also welcome papers that explore the practice and theory of evaluation in the context of climate literacy, where new ground in evaluation is being broken.

ED009: Climate Literacy: Great Lakes Climate Change Education Initiatives

Margaret Mooney, Rochelle Sturtevant, Steve Ackerman, Sandra Rutherford

Description: This session seeks to identify efforts to educate, mitigate, and adapt to impacts of climate change in the Great Lakes Region. Home to the largest system of surface fresh water on Earth and a shoreline nearly half as long as the U.S. coastline, this unique ecosystem is experiencing unique climate change impacts. By bringing together regionally relevant projects that study, steward and educate we hope to create synergistic momentum to advance climate literacy, leverage accomplishments, and enable meaningful responses to climate change region-wide.

ED010: Climate Literacy: Higher Education Efforts in Climate Change Education

Anne Gold, Britt Argow, Miriam Bertram, David Blockstein

Description: It is imperative that we prepare tomorrow's scientists and citizens to address societal impacts of a changing climate. The manifestations of climate change are becoming apparent, as is the need for individuals to hold a complex interdisciplinary Earth System understanding. We welcome papers that focus on instructional strategies such as active learning, and authentic research experiences in climate change at the higher education level both in STEM and non-STEM fields to prepare undergraduate, graduate students, postdocs and early career scientists to become climate literate members of the workforce. Submissions communicating research to varied audiences as well as addressing a diverse student body are also encouraged.

ED011: Climate Literacy: Preparing K-12 Students to Address Next Generation Challenges

Linda Morris, Missy Holzer, Kristen Poppleton, Frank Niepold
Description: Teachers today play a key role ins tudents' environmental literacy. Yet many suffer hurdles that are difficult to overcome. Opposition to global change concepts, lack of quality resources and comfort with complexities of the science are just a few. The Next Generation Science Standards emphasize climate change conceptual knowledge and skills as essential for today's students. How can we best support teachers in meeting these standards? We welcome diverse abstracts addressing effective professional development, innovative roles for scientists, exemplary curricular materials and successful out-of-school programs. Submissions related to strategies for dealing with anti-science sentiments are also encouraged.

ED012: Climate Literacy: Transdisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Programs that Promote Climate Literacy

Frank Niepold, Nilmini Silva-Send, Edward Geary

Description: In a warmer world access to food, water, and energy will affect health, biodiversity, economic stability, and national security. The nation's ability to prepare for and adapt may be exceeded as the rate of climate change increases. Reducing our vulnerability to these impacts depends not only upon our ability to understand climate science and the implications of climate change, but also upon our ability to integrate and use that knowledge effectively. This session will focus on a more comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to climate literacy in formal and informal educational venues that includes economic and social considerations in assessing risk, planning and decision-making.

ED013: Cognition: A Key Factor in Interpretation and Visualisation?

Clare Bond, Carol Ormand, Robert Krantz, Iain Stewart

Description: Has the best Earth Scientist seen the most rocks? Or the one who can best apply their knowledge? This session investigates the use and impact of cognition and techniques on interpretation and visualisation. With global resource and environmental challenges, training scientists to apply skills and knowledge effectively is crucial. Use of 3D visualisation through digital models for teaching, research and in the workplace is common. Visualization and interpretation in 2D to create realistic 3D models, and understanding model uncertainties is an important element of their effective use. We encourage submissions from pedagogic and geological research and industrial application, on interpretation and visualisation in Earth Science.

ED014: Controversial Topics in Science Education: Why Skeptics are Winning the Battle and How Lessons from Science Education Can Reverse This Trend

Sadredin Moosavi, Diana Dalbotten

Description: Passage of TN Statute SB0893, the so-called Monkey Bill, exemplifies the pressure on teachers of evolution and climate change. Attempts by scientific societies to advance their view on these issues are failing to convince much of the public. This session convenes geoscience education experts to discuss the failure to prevail in the public and legislative debate and to reassess the role of the scientific community in advising education policy. Revisiting assumptions about K-12 schools and the manner in which the scientific community speaks to teachers, legislators, and the public offers the potential to more effectively influence the teaching of science.

ED015: Developing K-12 Research Synergies to Inspire Young Scientists

Dana Veron, Frank Newton, Fabrice Veron, Chris Petrone

Description: Throughout educational and research institutions worldwide, efforts are underway to provide hands-on experience to undergraduate students. However, enthusiasm for science often develops much earlier in a student's life. Statistics show that this early scientific interest frequently wanes due to lack of encouragement. In order to nurture budding scientists' enthusiasm for marine and earth sciences, many grass-roots programs have been developed to meet this need. This session will explore current efforts underway to engage the K-12 population and foster growth in their interest and dedication to science. Focus will be placed on programs that strive to bring students in contact with ongoing research.

ED016: Distributing Science Data for Re-Use

Karl Benedict, Joseph Hourcle, William Weber

Description: This session will focus on services to distribute scientific research data so that it can be used by educators, the general public or scientists from other disciplines for uses other than its original intended purpose. Submissions that address underlying technology used to allow interested parties to browse and interact with the data, standards for documenting data, policies on data sharing, or that show benefits to scientific data re-use are encouraged, as are any submissions that discuss remaining barriers to re-use and ways to overcome them.

ED017: EarthScope in Geoscience Education and Outreach

Steven Semken, Steven Whitmeyer, Ramon Arrowsmith

Description: As instrumentation and activities of the EarthScope program extend across the contiguous United States, important findings based on EarthScope science appear regularly in the research literature and even in the press and social media. More and more educators are using EarthScope facilities, research activities, data, and results to enhance and promote quality teaching, STEM teacher professional development, place-based education, and public Earth science literacy in formal and informal contexts. Educators and researchers who use EarthScope facilities, projects, data, or findings for geoscience education or outreach to students, teachers, decision-makers, and the public can feature and share their practices, materials, and outcomes.

ED018: Engaging the Public in Geoscience Research

Annette Schloss, Sandra Henderson

Description: This session will focus on best practices and lessons learned from successful citizen science programs that promote greater understanding of geoscience content and protocols through participation. Submissions that address planning, marketing, recruiting, retention, web site design, data entry, data quality control, coordination and management, project evaluation, and final reporting back to participants are encouraged. Abstracts are encouraged that represent the diversity of participants found in citizen science projects including K-12 school groups, informal science centers, individuals, communities, universities, and laboratories. Special consideration will be given to abstracts that utilize mobile technologies to collect and report data.

ED019: Evidence of Impact: Evaluating Education and Public Outreach Programs

Stephanie Shipp, Sanlyn Buxner

Description: Increasingly education and public outreach (EPO) programs are being asked to provide evidence that they are making an impact. Funding agencies ask for a detailed evaluation plan as part of proposals that needs to include ways of assessing how the program is meeting the needs of different stakeholders including funders, facilitators, and audience members. This session will showcase various elements that need to be taken into account in EPO evaluation including determining program goals, ways to measure progress toward program goals, obtaining data and analysis methods. Presentations will include models for conducting evaluations, choosing and working with external evaluators, and examples of successful program evaluations.

ED020: Frontier Scientists Outreach

Elizabeth O'Connell

Description: Engaging Americans in the excitement and value of Alaskan Arctic discovery is considered by some to be a matter of national security. With a changing climate, resources of polar regions are being eyed by many nations. Frontier Scientists brings the stories of field scientists in the Far North to the public. With a website, an app, vidcasts, social media channels; FS is a model for making connections between the public and field scientists. FS will demonstrate how academia, web content, online communities, evaluation and marketing are brought together in a 21st century multi-media platform, how scientists can maintain their integrity while engating in outreach and how new forms of media such as vodcasts can entertain as well as inspire. FrontierScientists.com

ED021: Games, Interactive Simulations, and Virtual Labs for Science Teaching and Learning

Randy Russel, Erin Wood

Description: Interactive computer-based simulations, serious games, and virtual labs are being developed and used with growing frequency in many science-education disciplines at all age levels. These resources are employed across formal and informal educational settings. Scientific concepts in a broad range of Earth and space science disciplines can be more readily learned or more fully appreciated via the experience of manipulating variables to explore various ""what if"" scenarios in visually rich environments. This session will showcase simulations, games, and virtual labs designed to assist the teaching and learning of concepts in the realms of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences and related disciplines.

ED022: Geological Collections: Important Sources of Scientific and Historic Data for Research and Teaching: Cosponsored by MSA

Jean Demouthe, George Harlow, Susan Eriksson

Description: Earth's natural processes and past life forms are physically documented in collections of geological specimens, which are important windows into the history of scientific inquiry, and contain valuable historic and locality data. The goals of this session are: to create greater awareness of geologic collections, to highlight the critical role of collections in research initiatives in the earth sciences, to bring attention to the current state of geology collections, to describe technology available for research in collections, and to encourage collection use and support by researchers and educators.

ED023: Global Fiducials Program Imagery: New Opportunities For Observing Our Dynamic Earth

Bruce Molnia, Susan Price

Description: The Civil Applications Committee's Global Fiducials Program has systematically collected and publically released imagery time series spanning more than a decade at nearly 100 global locations to study and monitor dynamic Earth changes, and to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of environmentally sensitive areas. For each site, collection strategies were carefully defined to maximize information extraction capabilities and similarities in image parameters. Images can be freely downloaded and distributed. This session will present detailed summaries of more than a dozen of these sites, including information about the free and open access of these data for use in the classroom or for research purposes.

ED024: Improving Student Retention in the Geosciences

Michelle Hall, Lina Patino, Jill Karsten, Elizabeth Rom

Description: The current attrition rate in many college STEM degree programs is 50% or higher. While there is a great interest in improving the retention of students who enter college intending to major in STEM, we are still exploring effective and sustainable approaches that might be used to meet these goals. The need to assess and disseminate information about successful programs is a high priority in light of national goals for STEM education and funding opportunities. This session will include descriptions of programs that have documented success of improving the retention rate of students majoring in STEM degrees.

ED025: Next Generation Science Standards - How Will You Make Them Work for You?

Sheri Klug Boonstra, Sanlyn Buxner

Description: It is a matter of common practice to have Science Standards included in K-12 classroom lessons. However, with the Next Generation Science Standards being integrated into classrooms this year, education programs and developers that focus on planetary science will have an unparalleled opportunity to intertwine science and engineering into their lessons and products and be able to expand the story of space exploration. This session will focus on the creative ways in which presenters will capitalize on this opportunity to present a broader and more rigorous view of the process and nature of science. Presenters will showcase how these Standards' focus will enable better learning through their examples.

ED026: Ocean Science Online: Engaging Multiple Audiences

Allison Fundis, Giora Proskurowski

Description: How can an online presence transform oceanographic research and community engagement efforts? Capturing, educating, and retaining auciences is increasingly difficult in a competitive, content-hungry, read-and-run online landscape. The goal of this session is to encourage an exchange of ideas by highlighting successes during seagoing expeditions, onshore projects, and big-data efforts to connect active oceanographic research with audiences in both informal and formal settings. Submissions are encouraged that illustrate innovative approaches for engaging the internet-connected public, scientists, students, and educators through a variety of techniques including: video, web-based portals, point-to-point connections, and real-time data sets.

ED027: Perspectives on Increasing Diversity in the Geosciences Workforce

Carolyn Wilson

Description: Only five percent of faculty in physical science departments, including physics, chemistry, and the geosciences, in the United States are underrepresented ethnic minorities. Increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in the geosciences has become a priority at the undergraduate level, but this focus needs to be extended to early-career faculty as well because these are the representatives of the geosciences community that will act as key mentors and partners in a student's education and professional development. This session calls for discussions on effective strategies for supporting early career minority faculty, as well as report-outs from workshops, meetings, other discussions convened on this issue.

ED028: Preparing Undergraduate Students for Geoscience Careers and Degrees

Eric Baer, Heather Macdonald, Jan Hodder
Description: Many future geoscientists determine their career path early in their undergraduate education, either in large introductory geoscience classes or at two-year colleges. This session explores resources and strategies for recruiting and preparing these students for geoscience careers, either as geotechnical graduates (e.g. earth resources, environmental management, marine technology) or as geoscience majors at four-year colleges and universities. We particularly welcome contributions from programs that have developed evaluation methods for their recruiting and preparation efforts.

ED029: Public Participation in Citizen Science Research

Constance Walker, Nicole Gugliucci, Pamela Gay, Stephen Pompea

Description: Citizen science programs are gaining in popularity. They have the potential to benefit participants, extend science research, and improve public understanding of how science is done by engaging non-specialists in observations, measurements or classifications. Programs can range in involvement from passive to active. Citizen science offers a powerful approach to addressing a wide scope of scientific questions. In this session we will present projects and approaches used for citizen science across the geophysical spectrum. Presentations will include best practices and lessons learned from current projects in space and astronomy, geosciences and environmental, climate and ocean sciences, as well as a discussion of future directions.

ED030: Quintessential Field Sites: Model Field Areas and Active Learning

John McDaris, Kyle Fredrick

Description: Field experiences are an important part of Geology students' education. Many geologists recall a field site where they finally understood something profound about the Earth. In the face of shrinking funding and growing class sizes, it is difficult to include these meaningful endeavors in curricula. To take advantage of limited field exposure, it is necessary for time spent to be impactful as well as efficient. This session solicits the experiences of faculty from all geological disciplines that have developed field sites with unique or ideal conditions, as well as novel approaches to engaging students. Sharing these sites and ideas will encourage other faculty to involve their own students in meaningful field experiences.

ED031: Science Networks: Facilitating Collaboration and Spurring Innovation

Kristin Ludwig, Charna Meth

Description: Scientists collaborate for many reasons, but as research efforts grow and become more complicated, expensive, and infrastructure-dependent, necessity often drives the formation of more complex relationships. This can introduce innovative communication tools, novel methods for data sharing, and new governance models. What might originate out of need, however, often leads to scientific advancement and innovative solutions as early collaborations transform into communities working together across traditional boundaries. This session will address communities and networks, including how projects and programs define their communities; how participation is facilitated; and how collaborations may continue to evolve in the future.

ED032: Science Policy: Progress Reports from the Field, the Classroom, or Elsewhere

Karen McCurdy

Description: The challenges and rewards of working in the interstices between geology and government are many. At least since JW Powell we've known that it is important to develop a shared understanding of a public problem and a shared language to build a lasting policy consensus for addressing those problems. Much like the earth though, the policy environment consists of drift and even collapse. How do geoscientists engage policy problems in the 21st century? What works, what doesn't? Why should we care? Does interdisciplinarity help or hinder? Are there differences between the classroom, boardroom, and committee rooms? Share your reports and engage in a discussion of how we can improve science policy.

ED033: Scientists in Education and Public Outreach I - Strategies for Success

Sanlyn Buxner, Brooke Hsu, M Alexandra Matiella Novak

Description: Scientist participation in education and public outreach (EPO) increases audience interest in learning about scientific topics and lessens negative stereotypes about scientists. A small portion of scientists engage in EPO activities on a regular basis, which is beneficial for the audience, but tends to be taxing on scientists whom are repeatedly called upon to participate. Research has highlighted barriers that scientists note are preventing them from being more actively engaged in EPO activities and many EPO specialists are addressing these barriers to increase the number of scientists who are participating in EPO activities. This session will focus on successful strategies for scientist participation in EPO activities.

ED034: Scientists in Education and Public Outreach II - Opportunities for Involvement

Brooke Hsu, Sanlyn Buxner, M Alexandra Matiella Novak

Description: The Education and Public Outreach (EPO) community has identified several opportunities for scientist and expert involvement in EPO activities. Direct interaction between EPO audiences (K-12 students, educators, public, etc.) with scientists and experts is necessary to increase public awareness of cutting edge science research, and connect science education communities to subject matter expertise. Likewise, the scientists and experts gain experience in building relationships with the public and sharing their science. This session aims to serve as a venue where members of the EPO community can advertise opportunities to scientists and experts who are interested in getting more involved with EPO opportunities.

ED035: Teacher Professional Development Programs Promoting Authentic Scientific Research in the Classroom

Constance Walker, Stephen Pompea, Gail Scowcroft

Description: This session focuses on building a framework for successful research experiences for educators. Papers will address new projects, the roles of scientists and education specialists, the value of teams or ways to bring research experiences back to the classroom. Other topics can include recruitment strategies, program scale-up, financial planning, Internet and archival research projects, citizen science, mentoring issues, training of scientists and evaluation. Presenations are invited from all scientific disciplines: astronomy/space physics, atmospheric and ocean sciences, geology and geophysics, climate and environmental science, etc. Printed materials and CDs supplied by presenters.

ED036: Teaching About Sustainability

Tim Bralower, David Mogk, David Gosselin, David Blockstein

Description: This session will explore the grand challenges facing society regarding ways to educate society about living more sustainably and responsibly on Earth. Submit abstracts that document approaches that educate society about the many types of interactions between natural systems and humanity related to geohazards; energy, mineral, water, and soil resources; world population; degradation of habitat; pollution; climate change; public policy; ethics and values that inform and impact sustainable living. This session will provide the opportunity to demonstrate the instructional resources, datasets, models, activities, and teaching strategies that can be used to teach about sustainability at all instructional levels and for all audiences.

ED037: Teaching About Time

Karen Viskupic, Mark Schmitz, Maya Elrick

Description: Understanding geologic time and rates of processes are central to many geoscience, biology, and planetary science fields, yet understanding these concepts is challenging for students. These challenges arise from a variety of factors including having no intuitive feel for large numbers, our everyday view of the world as unchanging, and the need to infer a history that integrates short periods of high impact activity, long periods of low impact activity, and periods of no or destructive activity. This session solicits research from geo- bio- and planetary science education and the cognitive science that can be applied to help educators teach and assess an understanding of geologic and astronomic time.

ED038: Teaching Structural Geology, Geophysics, and Tectonics

Michael Edward Wysession, John McDaris

Description: This session will draw together geoscientists who use structural geology, geophysics, and tectonics in their teaching to share ideas about instructional activities innovate strategies that best advance the learning of undergraduate students majoring in the Earth sciences. A focus will be on incorporating the grand challenges, leading edge ideas, and frontiers of structural geology, geophysics, and tectonics into classes for majors. This session invites submissions from faculty with expertise in teaching these topics to undergraduate majors, particularly in integrating concepts from all three into their courses. Some presentations are expected from the 2012 On the Cutting Edge workshop of the same name.

ED039: Transformative Innovations in Earth, Oceans, and Atmospheric Science Education for Undergraduates Supported by the NSF TUES and CCLI Programs

Jill Singer, Jeffrey Ryan

Description: The NSF Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (TUES) Program, and its predecessor the Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) Program, have supported classroom innovations and curricular changes that are transforming the way that earth, ocean, and atmospheric sciences are being taught and learned at the undergraduate level. This session seeks to highlight the accomplishments and impacts of past and current TUES/CCLI-funded educational efforts across the geosciences and foster discussion about future educational needs in our community that might be facilitated with TUES Program support.

ED040: Undergraduate Geoscience Research Highlights

Laura Guertin, Pranoti Asher, Patricia Manley

Description: This poster session will bring together undergraduate student presenters with faculty co-authors to highlight undergraduate research experiences in Earth and space science, geoscience, and geophysics. Students from community colleges to research institutions, from the freshman through senior years are encouraged to disseminate their original ongoing and completed projects. The session is co-sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research-Geoscience Division and the American Geophysical Union.

ED041: Undergraduate Research Program Design and Effectiveness in the Earth and Environmental Sciences

Lisa Majkowski, Michael Pullin, Valarie Sloan

Descripion: A popular approach for increasing student interest in advanced degrees is the development and implementation of summer and academic year undergraduate research programs. These programs are often designed to engage students from colleges without research opportunities and students from underrepresented groups. This session seeks submissions from those that have developed and/or assessed undergraduate research programs. We are especially interested in descriptions of innovative program designs and in the assessment of the programs' effectiveness. Programs designed to accommodate participation by tribal college, community college, disabled, GLBT, or underrepresented students are also of interest.

ED042: Understanding & Responding to Misinformation

John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky

Description: Scientists face many challenges in effectively communicating science to the public, not the least being the presence of misinformation. However, there are actually positive educational opportunities available in the correction of misinformation. This session will explain the psychology and origins of misinformation, the cognitive processes at play when correcting misconceptions and recommended approaches to effective myth debunking. The session will be relevant to scientists seeking to explain their science, to communicators wishing to effectively outreach to the public and educators who may need to respond to misinformation in the classroom.

ED043: Weaving General-Audience Communication Training into Earth and Space Science Curricula

Melissa Rice, Pranoti Asher

Description: Scientists in Earth and space sciences (ESS) increasingly need to communicate well with non-scientist audiences, yet few universities/colleges include coursework on communicating with the public, media, and policy makers in their training of ESS students. This session highlights courses/programs that provide broad communications training for science students as well as best practices/strategies for getting such courses/programs into curricula. Presentations on related topics are welcome, e.g. (1) how to engage students and early-career scientists in using new media/social media to reach broad audiences; (2) studies about communications skills of scientists and factors that influence those skills, etc.

ED044: What Does My Audience Really Understand? Common Preconceptions in Students and the Public's Understanding of Space Science

Stephanie Staples Shipp, Sanlyn Buxner, Nicholas Gross

Description: All audience members have their own understanding of the way the world works that is rooted in their prior education, life-long observations, and personal experiences; often this understanding does not align with what is known to be scientifically correct. Erroneous mis/preconceptions are rarely challenged and can persist into adulthood. This session will showcase current research-based understanding of the cognitive roots of science preconceptions; common preconceptions in space and planetary science, techniques to assess misconceptions in varied learning venues, and mechanisms to challenge misconceptions effectively to promote long-term changes in understanding.

Associated Topical Sessions

These sessions are co-sponsored by education and may be of interest.

B023: Excellence in Research, Education, and Mentoring: A Discussion of Balance

Jennifer King, Jennifer Harden, Holly Barnard, Nan Rosenbloom

Description: The demographic makeup of mature AGU scientists suggests that gender, background, and ethnicity may impose uneven pressures on career paths. We invite scientists from a variety of perspectives to discuss career choices, changes in society and attitudes, and approaches to balancing the science career in a way that nurtures excellence and personal success in science and society. This session is dedicated to the inauguration of the Sulzman Award for Excellence in Education and Mentoring: An award sponsored by the Biogeosciences Section.

GC012: Communicating Climate Science — Seeking the Best of Old and New Paradigms

Natalia Andronova, Phil Rasch, James Byrne

Description: The goal of this session is to bring together scholars, social scientists, and journalists to discuss recent advances in the understanding of climate science, and the ways and means to communicate that science to policymakers, media, and society. We will be exploring both conventional science communication and unconventional science outreach. This session is a prelude designed to set the stage for a Chapman conference planned for spring 2013. That meeting will focus on the efficacy of science communication, building ways and means to improve communication of science to society.

H010: Impacts of Groundwater Inputs to Coastal Ecosystems

Gwynne Rife, Yevgeniy Kontar

Description: The coastal zone is frequently impacted form multiple stressors, such as eutrophication, invasive species, contaminated groundwater discharge, saltwater intrusion, and harmful algal blooms that can impair ecosystem function. The role of groundwater in these impacts is an emerging science. This session will focus on ecological, physical, chemical, biological, and management aspects of coastal groundwater and contributors are invited on relevant topics, including environmental and ecological effects on watersheds and coastal waters as well as other subjects related to groundwater-surface water interactions. This session will be hosted by the International Commision on Groundwater-Seawater Intractions.

H077: Hydrology and Earth Sciences in Developing World Communities

Veena Srinivasan, Michele Miniane

Description: Developing world communities face unique challenges in managing food insecurity, water-related diseases and climate vulnerability with limited funding, technical capacity and data. This session will highlight cutting-edge research, innovative data collection and analytic methods in developing communities: 1) Problem driven approaches to addressing critical environment, development and health challenges. 2) Locally appropriate and scientifically defensible data collection and instrumentation methods (e.g., participatory monitoring, low-cost water quality testing). 3) Innovative analytic methods to understand hydrologic processes in the absence of high data density. 4) Culturally appropriate outreach to communicate research findings.

IN002: A Governance Roadmap for Cyberinfrastructure in the Geosciences

David Arctur, M Lee Allison, Geoffrey Fox, Gary Crane

Description: Significant efforts are underway to create community-driven roadmaps for an open, adaptable, sustainable framework for data-intensive, multi-disciplinary Earth and Space System Science, compatible with the high-performance computing, large and small data sets, scalable software, and modeling. Governance systems should accommodate unique or critical needs among participants, and enable virtual organizations and networking to stimulate collaborative efforts globally, across disciplines, and among academia, industry, and government. We propose to convene experts from the domain sciences, IT and social sciences to examine Governance options and processes, share evolving concepts, and offer visions and pathways.

IN005: Advances in Ultra-scale Data Analysis and Visualization Using Python

Charles Doutriaux, Dean Williams, Gerald Potter

Description: New high level, open-source languages have spread their reach to the Earth-sciences community. This session focuses on the Python language and aims at further promoting its use among the earth sciences. While Python is fairly well established for day-to-day operations on local/small datasets, until recently it was still nearly non-existent when it came to handling very large datasets. This is changing and more and more advanced Python-based technics and tools are being offered to the community, such as the Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools. This session calls for papers describing recent advances in the handling, analysis, and visualization of ultra-scale and /or distributed datasets using Python.

IN009: Citing with Confidence: The Role of Persistent Identification of Agents and Objects in Research

Robert Arko, Jens Klump, Kerstin Lenhert

Description: Globally unique and persistent identification is a key component of a reliable digital information infrastructure and fundamental to providing sustainable and trustworthy services and information. Agents and objects - from authors, investigators, publications, and data sets, to field campaigns, stations, samples, and sensors - need to be cited without ambiguity and located in perpetuity. DOIs, ORCIDs, LSIDs, and IGSNs are examples for unique and persistent identifiers relevant to research. This session invites contributions about technical and organizational issues of globally unique and persistent identifiers and registries using GUID syntax, architecture, implementation, and governance.

IN020: Encouraging Data Stewardship and Preparing the Next Generation

Hampapuram Mamapriyan, Ruth Duerr

Description: As evidenced by the initiatives of agencies such as NASA, NOAA, and NSF, data stewardship is receiving increased attention in recent years. Indeed, these agencies recognize that data stewardship is a critical component of any scientific endeavor and is essential for supporting credible scientific research and data intensive applications. In addition, it is increasingly recognized that in order to facilitate the data intensive science of the future, educating current and future scientists in the fundamentals of data stewardship is required as is the development of a trained cadre of professional data scientists and curators. This session covers all aspects of data stewardship including data management training.

IN022: Envisioning Improvements for Earth Science Data Access

David Meyer, John Firor Moses, Ronald Weaver

Description: Institutions that hold collections of Earth science data generally aspire to a set of tenets which include: life stewardship of data, data and system interoperability, rapid delivery, multiple search and access paths through open interfaces, data transparency, client/user access to data experts, and system evolution responsive to changing user needs. We are requesting submissions from data centers and producers to assess their progress toward these tenets. Topics include scalable systems, web services, user data access, interoperability including Open Search protocols, use of standards such as OGC and OpenDap, ISO metadata, standard formats (NetCDF, HDF, etc.) and and archive information packaging.

IN028: Knowledge Networks and Collaborative Platforms in the Earth Sciences

Sylvia Murphy, David Arctur, Paul Edwards

Description: Earth science research requires infrastructures that can support knowledge integration on large scales. These systems must combine technical capabilities with organizational techniques for coordinating numerous projects and groups, often across institutional boundaries. This session will discuss novel uses of cyberinfrastructure to facilitate collaboration, community building, governance, or knowledge sharing. Possible submissions topics include: (a) hubs or forges for Earth science software development, particularly if they integrate multiple projects, (b) knowledge sharing platforms deploying social networking tools, and (c) portals designed to promote community participation in integrating models, data, or knowledge.

IN032: Model Driven Architectural Components for Science Data Repositories and Archives

Daniel Crichton, John Hughes

Description: Research and development across the space science communities have resulted in a wealth of architectural components for building data repositories and archives. Of special interest are open source components that allow science data providers and customers to directly participate in the development of data repositories using model driven approaches, for example configuring data registries and search engines using domain ontologies. This session invites papers on configurable and open source architectural components, domain ontologies, and case studies where model driven approaches are being used to meet the expectations of modern scientists for science data discovery, access and use.

IN036: Open Data for Open Science in Geoinformatics

Yan Xu, Beth Plale, Chaowei Yang, Ilya Zaslavsky

Description: This session will focus on data discoverability, accessibility, and consumability in todays geo-science research. Presentations will share vision and experience of using the latest computing technologies to solve the interoperability problem among vast amounts of heterogeneous geospatial data from various sources. It will cover topics in a typical data pipeline, from computing with distributed data source, to near-real-time simulation, to data visualization, to data curation, and to workflow automation. Speakers will design their presentations with seed questions for stimulating discussions among the attendees.

NH011: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Recent Natural Hazards - Ecological and Societal Significance

Yevgeniy Kontar, Viatcheslav Gusiakov, Shunichi Koshimura, Vicente Santiago-Fandi

Description: This session will deal with new findings and lessons from recent natural hazard events. In particular, the session will address the objectives of the USA NSF RAPID funding program and other national and international programs to understand and forecast natural hazards. The session will invite interdisciplinary papers on field surveys, remote sensing, observations, laboratory experiments, and numerical modeling to assess the impact of natural hazards and disasters.

NH013: Land-Ocean-Atmospheric Interaction Processes: Implications for Natural Hazards

Yevgeniy Kontar, Frank Rack, Ramesh Singh

Description: Recent earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, El Nino, hurricanes, floods, landslides, dust storms, and coastal erosion have shown strong coupling between land-ocean-atmospheric interaction which is responsible for changing planet Earth activities influencing human population, ecosystem and natural resources. We invite papers dedicated to Earth system sustainability and land-ocean-atmospheric interactions which are closely related topics of cross-cutting activities addressing issues of the advancement of typology, data bases and modeling, as well as capacity building and stakeholder involvement.

NH019: The March 2011 Tohoku-oki Tsunami, Japan

David Tappin, Kazuhisa Goto, Catherine Ghague-Goff, Stephan Grilli

Description: The Mw9 earthquake of 11 March 2011, the largest to strike Japan in recorded history, caused a devastating tsunami on the NE coast of Honshu Island that flooded inland up to 5 km with runup of up to 40 m. The earthquake and tsunami are the best geophysically recorded events to date because of seismic and geodetic networks, tide-gauges and offshore GPS buoys, and other data. There is a large database of runup heights, deposits and morphological changes in Japan and far field locations. We invite oral and poster submissions on all aspects of the tsunami; local and far field data, sedimentary evidence, novel techniques, tsunami modeling, and comparisons with past events. We encourage submissions on the integration of modeling and field observations.

NS003: Applied Geophysics in the Global Marketplace

Louise Pellerin, Jerry McJunkin

Description: We seek papers devoted to the extension of our understanding of who has needs for applied geophysics, what levels of education are required, what geophysical techniques are being used, what novel approaches are being applied, and what new technologies are around the corner or on the leading edge. In addition to the science and technology is the human story; what can be done, and is done, is dependent on the local infrastructure, politics, and ambitions of those applying these skills under conditions likely unknown to many. Students and professors can gain new understandings regarding what is the market demand for applied geophysics globally, where they fit in, what applications are of interest, what skills are needed, and where.

PA002: Assessing Socioeconomic Benefits of Earth Observation Science

Lawrence Friedl, Richard Bernknopf, Jay Pearlman, Molly Macauley

Description: Multiple international and national organizations such as GEO, GMES, and NASA are examining the societal benefits of Earth science satellite observations, research, and models. Methods to assess value of science information are still a challenge for scientists and have become important to justify large science programs. This session will present a range of analytic techniques and tools for determining socioeconomic benefits from the use of Earth science research, observations, and models in policy and management decisions. The session encourages papers that present quantitative approaches and case studies from various sectors (public, private, NGOs, academic, etc.) for a rich array of perspectives on this important topic.

PA003: Communication of Science through Art: A Raison D'etre for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Isaac Kerlow, Orin Pilkey, Miaki Ishii, Susan Eriksson

Description: Scientists today have an obligation to reach broader audiences for their discoveries to be relevant to society. Working with artists opens possibilities for more effective and enhanced communication of scientific results. This session explores three basic modes for artists and scientists to collaborate: art as a vehicle for communicating science, science as an inspiration for artists, and a synergetic interaction that creates new ways of understanding the world. This topic is particularly relevant in a time of increased international collaboration and nation-wide projects, as scientists and artists working together can strengthen the outreach and impact of science.

PA005: Countering Denial and Manufactured Doubt of 21st Century Science

Mark McCaffrey, Sheril Kirshenbaum

Description: Skepticism is the lifeblood of science, but deliberate misinformation and denial rooted in religious or political ideologies have used techniques of skeptical inquiry to delay, derail, and foster doubt in order to sabotage the timely integration of scientific findings into society. Ideologically driven strategies attack the validity of established science, insist that acceptance of the science will harm society, and demand alternatives for the sake of fairness and balance. This session highlights contributions from interdisciplinary communities involved with research, development and deployment of strategies that counter denial and manufactured doubt about 21st century science themes such as climate change or evolution.

PA006: Earth Science Applications: Tracing Their Sources and Heritage

Lawrence Friedl

Description: There are a growing number of applications of Earth science data, model outputs, etc. in policy, business and management activities and decision-making. Their heritage is rooted in key scientific and technical advances that enabled the Earth science data, model outputs, etc. Papers should examine the heritage, pedigree, and pathways of a successful Earth science application, articulating key achievements across multiple sectors that preceded and led to the application, such as technology development, data products, algorithms, cal/val, etc. Papers are encouraged to use visual methods to depict pathways in an application's development, such as road-maps for temporal developments or network diagrams for thematic developments.

PA007: Facebook, Twitter, Flicker: Science Communication Gone Social-The Social Media 101

Simon Schneider, Jessica Ball

Description: Politicians do it! Companies do it! Even religions leaders are getting more and more involved in communicating via the so-called social medias. But science bloggers, research tweets or institutional Facebook pages are not as wide spread as one might expect. This session provides information on how to start, which resources are to be taken into consideration and how to develop a social media strategy. We want to set a focus on evaluation methods as well as impacts to science communication and the ""public image of science"". We invite all Scientists and Researchers, Students and faculty members to contribute to this session: from Facebook to Flickr, from Slideshare to Youtube, from Pinterest to Google+.

PA008: Is Video Replacing Writing? The Role of Video in Effectively Communicating Science

Douglas Alan Harned, Gerard McMahon, Ryan Vachon

Description: New digital technologies have revolutionized use of video as a means of communication. Admit it—video is better than writing in many cases. How can scientists and educators best use the appeal of video and new media to communicate scientific results? This session will showcase video developed to disseminate scientific results to different audiences, and video used in the classroom to enhance learning. Discussion will include how video is a tool for communication, education, and how it is important to integrate information over many platforms, including social media. We will examine the changing face of the media, implications of the changes, and what we expect the changes to be in the future.

PA010: New Ideas in Geoscience and Environmental Communication

Yekaterina Kontar, Jeanette Drake

Description: The goal of this session is to discuss recent advances in the understanding of geoscience and how to communicate geoscience information to policy makers, the media, and society. We invite papers which focus on the efficacy of scientific communication, with ideas on improved practices within the larger context of sustainability, environmental communication, framing, social justice, communication ethics and geoscience public relations education.

PA012: Population 7 Billion and Growing: Water Security in a Changing Climate

Debra Perrone, Leslie Duncan, Antonia Rosati

Description: With predictions of Earth's climate suggesting non-stationarity, water supply becomes less predictable. Water demands are multifaceted and multidimensional—competition is influenced by population, culture, technology and economics, and changes over space and time. These inherent complexities, combined with broad and often conflicting stakeholder interests, create challenges for decision makers. To complicate matters water boundaries rarely align with political boundaries and, consequentially, local decisions can affect other regions or countries (e.g. Ganges-Brahmaputra and Colorado River Basins). This session intends to bring together physical, social and political scientists to discuss a sustainable path forward.

PA013: Social Media and Blogging as a Communication Tool for Scientists

John Cook

Description: Social media and the Internet has become an increasingly indispensable tool for scientists and communicators. This session will feature key figures in the climate blogosphere who have adopted novel and effective methods of communicating climate change science on the Internet. They will discuss the risks and rewards of new media, covering issues such as the challenges and advantages of crowd sources, viral marketing, Internet marketing and traffic generation, the use of smartphones, the management of online communities and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

S003: Citizen Empowered Seismology

Paul Earle, Remy Bossu

Description: We solicit studies that augment or replace traditional methods of collecting observations with data obtained through citizen engagement. The session includes studies that engage the public to gather or process data, and those that obtain geophysical insight from Internet-based information that is originally intended for other purposes. It includes crowdsourcing initiatives, citizen science projects, and studies based on harvesting data from the Internet and social networks to extract earthquake related information. Discussions are encouraged on the way these studies modify interactions between seismologists and society at large, modify our understanding of public demands and expectations after disasters, and how they transform the services we provide to society.

SA004: Exploring Geoscience Frontiers With Low-Cost Access to Space

Lars Dyrud, Howard Todd Smith, Makenzie Lystrup

Description: Fewer than 500 specific satellites and people have been launched into space by government agencies. New opportunities for science using vehicles and approaches that are outside the traditional and costly, low-risk, approach are becoming widely available. We seek presentations on how the entire spectrum of access, from balloons, aircraft, commercial sub-orbital, hosted-payloads, and cube-sats can be exploited to use new approaches to instrumentation, spacecraft and mission design to answer today's Earth and Geospace science questions. With instrumented commercial sub-orbital launches scheduled for 2012, we encourage submissions on science investigations enabled by this new capability.

V012: Early Earth Differentiation: Cosponsored by EGU-GMPV

Michael Walter, James Badro

Description: Important recent findings in experimental petrology, cosmochemistry, geochemistry, mineral physics, and numerical modeling, have alternately corroborated or challenged the current paradigms surrounding the processes and timelines of differentiation in the early Earth. We seek to discuss and relate these findings. We seek contributions from experimental petrology and geochemistry, geochemistry and geochemical modeling, cosmochemistry and cosmochemical modeling, and mineral physics and geodynamics. We welcome contributions related (but not limited) to: accretion and impacts; core formation; crystallisation and degassing in the molten early mantle; formation of the first crust and atmosphere.


      Next Page »